| IT fell in the ancient periods | |
| Which the brooding soul surveys, | |
| Or ever the wild Time coin'd itself | |
| Into calendar months and days. | |
| |
| This was the lapse of Uriel, | 5 |
| Which in Paradise befell. | |
| Once, among the Pleiads walking, | |
| Sayd overheard the young gods talking; | |
| And the treason, too long pent, | |
| To his ears was evident. | 10 |
| The young deities discuss'd | |
| Laws of form, and metre just, | |
| Orb, quintessence, and sunbeams, | |
| What subsisteth, and what seems. | |
| One, with low tones that decide, | 15 |
| And doubt and reverend use defied, | |
| With a look that solved the sphere, | |
| And stirr'd the devils everywhere, | |
| Gave his sentiment divine | |
| Against the being of a line. | 20 |
| 'Line in nature is not found; | |
| Unit and universe are round; | |
| In vain produced, all rays return; | |
| Evil will bless, and ice will burn.' | |
| As Uriel spoke with piercing eye, | 25 |
| A shudder ran around the sky; | |
| The stern old war-gods shook their heads; | |
| The seraphs frown'd from myrtle-beds; | |
| Seem'd to the holy festival | |
| The rash word boded ill to all; | 30 |
| The balance-beam of Fate was bent; | |
| The bounds of good and ill were rent; | |
| Strong Hades could not keep his own, | |
| But all slid to confusion. | |
| |
| A sad self-knowledge withering fell | 35 |
| On the beauty of Uriel; | |
| In heaven once eminent, the god | |
| Withdrew that hour into his cloud; | |
| Whether doom'd to long gyration | |
| In the sea of generation, | 40 |
| Or by knowledge grown too bright | |
| To hit the nerve of feebler sight. | |
| Straightway a forgetting wind | |
| Stole over the celestial kind, | |
| And their lips the secret kept, | 45 |
| If in ashes the fire-seed slept. | |
| But, now and then, truth-speaking things | |
| Shamed the angels' veiling wings; | |
| And, shrilling from the solar course, | |
| Or from fruit of chemic force, | 50 |
| Procession of a soul in matter, | |
| Or the speeding change of water, | |
| Or out of the good of evil born, | |
| Came Uriel's voice of cherub scorn, | |
| And a blush tinged the upper sky, | 55 |
| And the gods shook, they knew not why. | |
